By Notra Trulock
Editorially, the Times didn't
equivocate. It declared that
On July 8, a Times editorial praised
The Times Got
It Wrong
But what used to be regarded as the paper of record got the
Prof. Wendler says it is still "too great
by a factor of two for the 1971 to 2000 period." He bases this on
On the Internet, Tech Central Station
attributed the warming trend to a spike in temperatures during the Great
Pacific Climate Shift in 1976-1977, a pattern that has been repeated over the
past 100 years. Subtract those years, and there is no warming trend after 1977.
Professor (emeritus) Sue Ann Bowling, a climat-ologist
with the Atmospheric Sciences Faculty at UA/Fair-banks, confirmed to AIM that
the Pacific climate shift caused a "step change" in temperature
trends around 1976-1977.
Both Wendler and Bowling were mystified by the
Times' num-bers. Wendler
speculated that his colleagues at the Center for Global Change may have used an
earlier time period or numbers from other stations. Other scientists, speaking
anonymously, think that the Center for Global Change may have fudged the
numbers to support its projections of future change, which have temperature increases
in
Wrong Numbers,
Wrong Consequences
If the corrected numbers in the Times
article are off by a factor of two, does that mean that the Times' predictions
of catastrophic consequences are equally wrong? For the Times, along with
environmental activists, left-liberal politicians (and Senator John McCain) and
those "mainstream scientists" the Times likes to quote, it doesn't
really matter. When it comes to global warming, for this group "the debate
is over."
Likely presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., in his opening
statement at a recent congressional hearing, captured the mood of this group by
saying that it is now "time to shift the focus from the science to the
solution of climate change." By solution, Kerry means mandatory reductions
of CO2 emissions and other curbs on industry, particularly
automakers. Politicians like Senators Kerry, McCain and Lieberman have all
climbed on the global warming bandwagon, and one source claims that twice as
many climate change bills were introduced in the 107th Congress as
in the previous two sessions combined. State officials, like California
Governor Gray Davis and the Democratic attorneys general of 10 other states are
all impatient with
Activists applaud these measures, but
would prefer to launch a "new industrial revolution" to fundamentally
transform the way we "power the global economy." This means "new
fuels, new engines, new industrial processes, and new ways to generate
electricity" (but not nuclear power). They urge Americans to "adjust
to new realities" or go the way of the dinosaurs. You can tell how serious
the issue is getting when trial lawyers start speculating about filing
class-action lawsuits seeking damages on behalf of individuals or even
countries that claim they have suffered from the effects of global warming.
A Failed
Hypothesis
But the science on global warming, and its putative causes, is by no
means settled. The earth's atmosphere has both warmed and cooled over the
centuries without any human activity being responsible. Dr. S. Fred Singer,
president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), points out that
a study of CO2 and temperatures over the past 11,000 years that was
analyzed in both Science and Nature in 1999 found that the
increase in CO2 in the atmosphere tends to follow, not precede, a
rise in temperature. Dr. Singer reminds us that "the bulk of the
temperature rise in the 20th century took place before 1940, while most of the
CO2 emissions took place after 1940 and coincided with a slight
climate cooling between 1940 and 1975." The satellite temperature readings
from 1979 through June 2002 have risen at the rate of only 0.1 degree
Fahrenheit per decade or 1.0 degree per century.
The global warming advocates rely on
projections of the earth's surface temperatures derived from computer models to
support their claims that we are facing disaster if we don't take decisive
action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The increase projected for the
21st century is 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared to an increase of
0.7E to 1.4EF in the 20th century. Advocates, like the authors of a
recent National Research Council report, claim that, "warming trends are
most clearly marked by surface temperature measurements-which have been
recorded daily at hundreds of locations for more than a century." Critics
don't dispute that some warming has occurred. They say the surface temperature
data are not a reliable measure of the increase, citing the poor coverage of
oceans and higher latitudes and the location of many stations near urban areas,
making the data susceptible to an "urban heat island effect."
Satellite Data
More Convincing
AIM has repeatedly pointed to the
value of data collected by microwave sounding units that fly on a constellation
of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar-orbiting
satellites. These TIROS-N satellites record temperature fluctuations in the
lower troposphere (up to about 5 miles) and the lower stratosphere (about 9-12
miles up), where the effects of greenhouse gases should be most apparent. As
the NRC report concluded, "if global warming is caused by the buildup of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere, it should be evident not only at the earth's surface,
but also in the low-mid troposphere."
But it isn't. As noted above, satellite data show a 0.1EF increase per
decade since 1979, when the program was started-a dramatic difference from the
surface temperature trend. The satellite data correlate with those collected by
weather balloons using completely different sensors. The coverage is global and
extends over oceans and surface areas where land-based systems are infrequent.
Measurements are taken in atmospheric layers above the effects of urban heat
islands. The satellite sensors are calibrated by NOAA's
practice of putting new birds in orbit before older satellites are retired. But
global warming advocates generally ignore satellite data. During the
For global warming advocates, the
chief culprit is greenhouse gas emissions, and especially CO2,
produced by burning fossil fuel. Deb Callahan, President of the League of
Conservation Voters, a Washington-based political action group that funds
"pro-environment" candidates, says "carbon dioxide
pollution" is to blame for all the problems. Another advocacy group,
Environmental Defense, labels carbon dioxide "global warming
pollution." This simply reflects the consensus of global warming advocates
who point to human activity, especially fossil fuel burning, as (mostly)
responsible for the warming trends.
To its credit, the Bush
administration has tried to slow down the global warming propaganda machine.
James Mahoney, the new Assistant Secretary of Commerce who is the deputy chief
of NOAA, used his recent congressional testimony to remind the Senate that
"substantial uncertainties remain to be addressed" in global warming
science. He said scientific knowledge about "specific cause-effect relationships"
is only beginning to emerge. Nevertheless, the Bush administration has embraced
the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 18% over the next decade. The
administration prefers voluntary methods, but it still pours billions of
dollars into climate change research.
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan
Professor of Meteorology at MIT, disputes the link between climatic change and
CO2. In 2001, he testified before a Senate committee that past major
climatic changes were either "uncorrelated with changes in CO2
or were characterized by temperature changes which preceded changes in CO2
by hundreds or thousands of years." Lindzen
argued that there is no demonstrable linkage between growth in CO2
generation and major climatic change of the type forecast by global warming
advocates. Others stress that if CO2 emissions really are the
culprit, then temperatures in the troposphere should be warming faster than
surface temperatures. The satellite data show the reverse is true.
A central problem with global warming
theories is the reliance on two large computer models to project impacts of
warming and greenhouse gas emissions on the environment. These two models,
according to the critique, vastly exaggerate the atmosphere's sensitivity to
increasing CO2 and cannot replicate other variables like clouds or
water vapor that also impact climates. Most damaging, the models fail to
accurately simulate recorded experience when put to the test, so many wonder
why these models should be used to support policy making on climate change.
It's Not About
the Science
The dirty secret is that global warming is driven more by the search for
funding than the search for scientific truth. "Big science" was
adrift in the early 1990s, like many other beneficiaries of the Cold War, and
was desperate to sustain its federal funding. Global warming had all the key
attributes of the next big cause. It could be used to frighten the politicians
and the public, using threats of catastrophic consequences to extract billions
of dollars for research to prevent it. The science was immature, and the door
was wide open to all sorts of proposals and projects by scientists promising
solutions. High-performance computers were the tools, and the projects promised
to be long-term and career-sustaining. Getting funds was easy. As MIT Professor
Lindzen has noted, "saving the planet" had
a nice ring to it and seemed to portend big bucks at the end of the global
warming rainbow.
By the early 1990s, there was a
convergence between the proponents of big science and the left-oriented
activist community. Many of the Left's old myths and socialist dreams had
collapsed with the demise of the
Global warming fanatics found powerful allies in the Democratic Party,
and especially then Senator Al Gore. Government control and public opinion were
the levers needed to implement the global warming agenda. Activists would need
to capture key policy jobs in those federal agencies with science portfolios,
like the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and
NOAA. Once secured, these jobs would give activists control of the key levers
of influence over the scientific community-research grants and federal funding
of national labs and universities. They knew that they could always buy
scientists who would turn out scientific studies and research reports that
would help them shape and mold public opinion.
The
Clinton/Gore Legacy
The Clinton/Gore victory in 1992
opened that door. President George H.W. Bush's refusal to personally attend the
1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and his reluctance to
accept binding agreements on carbon dioxide curbs gave the Clinton/Gore team
another issue in their campaign to show that "President Bush was out of
touch with the people and their daily concerns."
Once in power, Al Gore, a strident environmentalist, began to remake the
government bureaucracy in his image. His life experience in
He installed his former legislative
director, Carol Browner, as the new EPA administrator in 1993. Under Browner,
EPA became the central coordinator of the federal global warming campaign,
dispensing funds through a variety of inter-agency committees and programs. At
the Defense Department, the position of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for
Environmental Security was established, and the CIA established a task force to
apply national technical means (satellite collection platforms) to monitor
world environmental issues. Tim Wirth, a former Democratic senator from
Colorado, became Undersecretary for Global Affairs at the State Department. He
led all
Naysayers Not
Wanted
The fate of Bush appointee William Happer, a
highly respected
Robert Watson had predicted that an
ozone hole would open up over Kennebunkport, ME, President Bush's vacation
home. Happer had publicly ridiculed Watson's
suggestion and so Happer was almost certainly on McGinty's enemies list. Happer,
in a later interview, correctly identified the Clinton/Gore approach as
"politically correct science." The huge amounts of funding made
available by Clinton/Gore ensured that the new administration would get the
"answers" on global warming it was seeking. Happer
said that science was being turned on its head. Instead of science driving
policy, policy now determined the results it wanted and then paid scientists to
come up with them.
Also, at the Energy Department, a staff lawyer from the Natural Resources
Defense Council, another Washington-based environmental advocacy group, became
Secretary Hazel O'Leary's chief of staff and then went on to become an
assistant secretary, with control of over $1.3 billion annually in
climate-change funding. The Energy Department doled out billions of dollars in
global warming funding to its National Laboratories, which had convinced the
department that many of its computer models used to develop nuclear weapons
were applicable to climate modeling. In addition, the Department funded
university research grants and scholarships in the various climate-change
academic disciplines.
The largest Energy project is the
Atmosphere Radiation Measurement (ARM) project, run by Sandia
National Laboratory along with the other nuclear weapons design laboratories.
The ARM program even has its own air force; it uses a fleet of Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs) and propeller-driven aircraft to
collect cloud data at three sites:
Over its two terms, the
Scaring The Public
As part of its campaign to mold public opinion, the EPA sponsored
regional conferences throughout the
Global warming advocates also had a
reliable ally in the mainstream media. In most cases, the media simply report
research findings and results handed to reporters in government news releases
and interviews. The more provocative and alarming the reports, the more likely
they are to find their way onto the front page. The
The media have helped create the false impression that the vast majority
of scientists agree that global warming is a serious threat that calls for
drastic action. Agreement with this seems to be a litmus tests for Times reporters
covering science. One such reporter, Kenneth Chang, answered a question on the
Times Internet site about global warming by saying that it's a complicated
subject, but 97% of all scientists think it is real and is caused by CO2
emissions. He said there are uncer-tainties in the
science, but he admitted that he tries to write his articles on global warming
from the majority viewpoint. Nevertheless, he had a good article in the Times
last April that corrected the impression given by an earlier story by another
reporter that global warming was affecting
GLOBAL WARMING PROVIDES MANY
EXCELLENT EXAMPLES OF THE MEDIA'S FAILURE TO get the facts straight, correct
their errors and avoid political bias. Notra Trulock calls attention to many of
these in this AIM Report. The most persistent error is the refusal of most
journalists to recognize and report what the satellite temperature data have
demonstrated since 1979-that there is no significant change in the warming
trend since then. Most of the journalists who cover this subject persist in
giving the public the impression that virtually all the scientists in the world
agree that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm at an accelerated
rate. They do this by reiterating it as a fact and by citing in their stories
mainly those scientists who profess to believe this. Unfortunately, the same
temptation that has caused the corruption in the business world has corrupted
science in recent decades. That is the lure of big money. Billions of dollars
in grants are available to those who hold out promises of proving that we face
dire catastrophes if we don't take drastic action to stop the globe from
overheating. It is naive to think that this has no corrupting effect.